What Do You Live For?
- Nov 9, 2017
- 4 min read
If you've seen any of my other articles or videos, you may have noticed that I seem to have something against what I'm going to call "Hollywood" or "Disney," purely for the generalisation. I would like to point out that, yes, I do know full well that stories, films and fairy-tales come from all over the world, and that they started long before Hollywood or even the U.S.A were born.
But when I was a child, over a thousand years ago, coloured television was still a pretty new and exciting thing - even though it was already about fifty years old. It was a big, pervasive part of life, for many of us in the Western World. Perhaps especially for only children, such as myself. Kids today have lots of other technology, but as you can see with the popularity of Netflix and other streaming sites, the archaic ideas of "Hollywood" and "television" are still nice and strong today.
Fiction may have started out as morality tales, but they've become a form of escapism.
Don't get me wrong - I watch lots of movies and t.v. shows. I mean, I've been cripplingly depressed for the last few months in particular, and burrowing my mind into alternate realities has proved very cathartic indeed.
But what I theorise is this: the fictional worlds that have always been a part of my coping/escaping skills have created unrealistic expectations of how life is "supposed" to go. I will admit here that books and novels - even ones based on truth - contribute to this. But I love books fiercely, reading makes your brain work harder, and this is the only time I'll point out that yes, I know this, too.
Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.
The beginning starts with some explaining and description, the middle is filled with adventures and experiences, and the end is where you say goodbye to the characters and/or the story, neat as you please, with perhaps a little hook at the end to pull you into the next book/episode/sequential film.
Life, does not.
Life is basically just keeping yourself, and anyone you're responsible for alive.
That's it. Happiness is a pleasant mistake. I've (and perhaps you've) been taught by all of the (billions of metric tonnes of) stories I filled my head with that happiness is an end goal, an inevitability, and a final kind of thing.
I feel like I NEED to have something to live for. And of course, for my sanity, I do. But every time I inspect those kinds thoughts, I can't help but remember Cinderella and Aladdin. I'm beginning to wonder whether "having something to live for" is a new idea that "Hollywood" - either accidentally or intentionally - brought with it.
(If you're wondering what I mean by that: capitalism requires that we yearn for more, so that we want to buy things, so that we want to work for money to buy those things. The Western World is a giant rewards system - eat your vegetables {work hard} and you can have dessert {arbitrary trinkets with arbitrary, perhaps fictional, value}. This, at the expense of poorer countries who create those trinkets for a very small percentage of what they eventually sell for.
But, I digress.)
Tim Minchin says it best, really. Right here
Seriously, if you like web-videos - and even if you don't - watch this.
So, happiness is a happy accident, and thanks to what I'm calling "Hollywood," I need it. Without it I feel empty, hollow... incomplete. The solution? Find it in little bits and pieces. Find happiness on a mountainside on your day off, or in drawing a picture, or in listening to a song you like forty million times. Find happiness in looking at your child's face, and accept the happiness you feel, curled up on the couch in your pyjamas watching Gossip Girl. It's okay if you don't love your job, you don't have to. But you can still take pride in accomplishing whatever it is, every day that you do. Love people. Really love them, not for what they give you, but just for existing, for being who they are. For being thoughtful or helpful or kind. Let them love you, as you are - broken and miserable, you're still worthy of love, purely because you exist.
Find little bits of happiness, cherish them, and remember them. Don't mourn them when you have to do things that don't actively make you happy. Look forward to the next one. Maybe plan it out.
Accepting this concept, that happiness in the "happily-ever-after" sense, simply does not exist, and has never existed, took me a moment but has given me much, much, peace.
Humans are complicated. Even when I am happy, I ruin it by thinking about it.
Happiness is not a destination. And it is not a journey. It is an experience - myriad experiences - and nothing more. Despite what Hollywood would have us believe, it is not an ending. There is no "ever after" anything.
This I say, as a person who regularly suffers from suicidal ideation: don't think about the end of anything. Think about now. Do your best with what you've got, and be careful with yourself.
What do you live for? It doesn't matter.
Live, just because you're here. Aurora-Jak
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